Green Drinks Tomorrow night! June 10th 2014

New West Shoreline Clean up September 23rd

Come out to this annual event and help with the shoreline clean up and invasive plant pull!
For more info check out the Great Canadian Shoreline Clean up website here! 

Companion Planting

New Westminster Environmental Partners AGM

Community Garden Harvest 2010

Community Garden 2010

everyone helped out

We built key hole style garden beds.

Things grew and grew...

Beyond our wildest imaginations!

garden meeting

Our first pot-luck!

Harvesting worms!

This summer, for the first time we "harvested" the compost from our worm composter !
There are many types of worm composters on the market today, some are very fancy and look nice, but a simple Rubbermaid container with some holes drilled in the bottom has worked for us for a number of years.

The compost in this container needed to be separated from the worms. This is quite simple but time consuming. I enlisted the kids to help and they were happy to save the worms for me!

First you need some newspaper or garbage bags, or both like I used. You simply take out the compost and the worms make their way to the bottom of the pile. This is best done on a sunny day in the backyard. Once the compost is spread out you remove the worms,(you could keep some in the compost you are going to use in the garden) We took them out very carefully and returned them to the container.

In the end we were left with many buckets of beautiful compost to add to my garden!
This was in June, and things sure have grown since then! Gotta love those worms! They eat your garbage (food scraps) and give you compost! yeah!

how does your garden grow?

With the cool spring and not so much sun, I am happy to say most of my plants
are still alive in my garden!

The garden has seen a few casualties so far, I have lost some onions and kale and I can't seem to keep basil alive. I have taken to putting egg shells all around the garden to keep the slugs away.

This is the potato plant (above) I have grown from a potato in my cupboard!!

The Chrysanthemums (mums) I had in planters last year, this year they have doubled! - Romaine Lettuce ~ Zucchini

I have staked up my tomatoes and pea's, you can see my broccoli; top right has gone to flower :(

These beautiful plums are growing over my front lawn - from the neighbouring tree!

I have been lucky enough to harvest a few strawberries so far this year!

After weeding and watering the garden tonight, we picked some cherries from the tree on our front lawn. These are some of the best cherries I have ever eaten if I do say so myself!!

Gotta love summer in the garden!

diggin in

We are famous! Well I never post pictures of myself or children online, even facebook. Recently things have changed! We are on the cover of the local paper! Here!

I have been volunteering with the local community garden society. I strongly believe in their mandate. To bring people together in the community around growing food!

The community gardening society has been successful in securing our first plot for a garden and it is just steps away from my house! There are a number of initiatives under way in the city of New Westminster. Including the community gardens, farmers market, community kitchens, an environmental partners organisation, and a food security group.

Knowing where our food comes from and how to grow food is becoming more important to many people.
To be sustainable we need our food source to be local and to take personal responsibility for food choices.

Every thing you can grow yourself bring you one step closer to nature and you will reap more then a few herbs and vegetables. Growing food is more satisfying then you can imagine! Why not try something new this year and grow your own?

One small change

I have taken up the challenge put forward by hipmountainmama to make one small change for the planet each month between now and Earth Day (April 22, 2010)

I already have a pile of idea's of things I will try and incorporate into my routine, but this months idea has been needed for a long time.
- to compost food scraps!

I had my worm composter going strong for the past year. While we were apartment dwellers it was very important to me to keep it monitored. However when we moved to a house this summer I left the worms outside in the backyard and didn't really drain it properly and check it the same. I know I am a worm murderer. but maybe not. I will check it tomorrow and see what the damage is.

I am going to empty out the old "earth machine" read big black composter the city sells each spring, that was left here by the previous tenets and see if I can use it!

One thing I don't understand is why the spell-check does not recognise the word composter??? How environmentally unfriendly! - but it also doesn't accept homeschooling as a word either- go figure :)

Shop Smarter

That is the purpose of the sustainable living expo on right now at the new Vancouver Convention Centre.

For the third year I am volunteering at EPIC! I am a strong believer in supporting ethical, fairly traded, organic and local products. Epic gives consumers an opportunity to sample products, talk with business owners and find out what is new and exciting in many areas of green consumerism.

There are hundreds of products to try at EPIC this year. There are fashion shows, food and beverages, health and beauty products, travel and recreation, transportation, business products, recycling information, energy & technology, kids and babies products, pets, community and finance information.

Over the next few weeks I will be writing about companies I have met and products I bought or sampled at EPIC.

The world is getting greener and the people who are spear heading the movement want you to join them! Come and check out EPIC tonight or tomorrow, Sunday, May 10th from 11-5, at the new Vancouver Convention Centre, beside Canada place. (the future site of the media headquarters for the 2010 Olympic games)